Book 2 — CHAPTER 2
Reading edition
Puranic Genealogies.
—The chronicles of the Bhagavat and Agni, containing the genealogies of the Surya (
sun
) and Indu (
moon
) races, shall now be examined. The first of these, by calculation, brings down the chain to a period six centuries subsequent to Vikramaditya (
A.D.
650), so that these books may have been remodelled or commented on about this period: their fabrication cannot be supposed.
Although portions of these genealogies by Sir William Jones, Mr. Bentley, and Colonel Wilford, have appeared in the volumes of the Asiatic Researches, yet no one should rest satisfied with the inquiries of others, if by any process he can reach the fountain-head himself.
If, after all, these are fabricated genealogies of the ancient 30families of India, the fabrication is of ancient date, and they are all they know themselves upon the subject. The step next in importance to obtaining a perfect acquaintance with the genuine early history of nations, is to learn what those nations repute to be such.
Doubtless the original Puranas contained much valuable historical matter; but, at present, it is difficult to separate a little pure metal from the base alloy of ignorant expounders and interpolators. I have but skimmed the surface: research, to the capable, may yet be rewarded by many isolated facts and important transactions, now hid under the veil of ignorance and allegory.
Neglect of History by the Hindus.
—The Hindus, with the decrease of intellectual power, their possession of which is evinced by their architectural remains, where just proportion and elegant mythological device are still visible, lost the relish for the beauty of truth, and adopted the monstrous in their writings as well as their edifices. But for detection and shame, matters of history would be hideously distorted even in civilized Europe; but in the East, in the moral decrepitude of ancient Asia, with no judge to condemn, no public to praise, each priestly expounder may revel in an unfettered imagination, and reckon his admirers in proportion to the mixture of the marvellous
[26]. Plain historical truths have long ceased to interest this artificially fed people.
If at such a comparatively modern period as the third century before Christ, the Babylonian historian Berosus composed his fictions, which assigned to that monarchy such incredible antiquity, it became capable of refutation from the many historians of repute who preceded him. But on the fabulist of India we have no such check. If Vyasa himself penned these legends as now existing, then is the stream of knowledge corrupt from the fountain-head. If such the source, the stream, filtering through ages of ignorance, has only been increased by fresh impurities. It is difficult to conceive how the arts and sciences could advance, 31when it is held impious to doubt the truth of whatever has been handed down, and still more to suppose that the degenerate could improve thereon. The highest ambition of the present learned priesthood, generation after generation, is to be able to comprehend what has thus reached them, and to form commentaries upon past wisdom; which commentaries are commented on ad infinitum. Whoever dare now aspire to improve thereon must keep the secret in his own breast. They are but the expounders of the olden oracles; were they more they would be infidels. But this could not always have been the case.
With the Hindus, as with other nations, the progress to the heights of science they attained must have been gradual; unless we take from them the merit of original invention, and set them down as borrowers of a system. These slavish fetters of the mind must have been forged at a later period, and it is fair to infer that the monopoly of science and religion was simultaneous. What must be the effect of such monopoly on the impulses and operations of the understanding? Where such exists, knowledge could not long remain stationary; it must perforce retrograde. Could we but discover the period when religion[2] ceased to be a profession [27] and became hereditary (and that such there was these very genealogies bear evidence), we might approximate the era when science attained its height.
The Priestly Office.
—In the early ages of these Solar and Lunar dynasties, the priestly office was not hereditary in families; it was a profession; and the genealogies exhibit frequent instances of branches of these races terminating their martial career in the
32
commencement of a religious sect, or
gotra
, and of their descendants reassuming their warlike occupations. Thus, of the ten sons of Ikshwaku,
three are represented as abandoning worldly affairs and taking to religion; and one of these, Kanina, is said to be the first who made an
agnihotra
, or pyreum, and worshipped fire, while another son embraced commerce. Of the Lunar line and the six sons of Pururavas, the name of the fourth was Raya; “from him the fifteenth generation was Harita, who with his eight brothers took to the office of religion, and established the Kausika Gotra, or tribe of Brahmans.”
From the twenty-fourth prince in lineal descent from Yayati, by name Bharadwaja, originated a celebrated sect, who still bear his name, and are the spiritual teachers of several Rajput tribes.
Of the twenty-sixth prince, Manava, two sons devoted themselves to religion, and established celebrated sects, viz. Mahavira, whose descendants were the Pushkar Brahmans; and Sankriti, whose issue were learned in the Vedas.Vedas. From the line of Ajamidha these ministers of religion were continually branching off.
In the very early periods, the princes of the Solar line, like the Egyptians and Romans, combined the offices of the priesthood with kingly power, and this whether Brahmanical or Buddhist.[4] Many of the royal line, before and subsequent to Rama, passed great part of their lives as ascetics; and in ancient sculpture and drawings the head is as often adorned with the braided lock of the ascetic as with the diadem of royalty.[5]
The greatest monarchs bestowed their daughters on these royal hermits and sages [28]. Ahalya, the daughter of the powerful Panchala,[6] became the wife of the ascetic Gautama. The sage Jamadagni espoused the daughter of Sahasra[7] Arjuna, of 33Mahishmat,[8] king of the Haihaya tribe, a great branch of the Yadu race.
Among the Egyptians, according to Herodotus [ii. 37, 141], the priests succeeded to sovereignty, as they and the military class alone could hold lands; and Sethos, the priest of Vulcan, caused a revolution, by depriving the military of their estates.
We have various instances in India of the Brahmans from Jamadagni to the Mahratta Peshwa, contesting for sovereignty; power[9] and homage being still their great aim, as in the days of Vishvamitra[10] and Vasishtha, the royal sages [29] whom “Janaka 34sovereign of Mithila, addressed with folded hands in token of superiority.”
Relations of Rajputs with Brahmans.
—But this deference for the Brahmans is certainly, with many Rajput classes, very weak. In obedience to prejudice, they show them outward civility; but, unless when their fears or wishes interfere, they are less esteemed than the bards.
The story of the King Vishvamitra of Gadhipura[11] and the Brahman Vasishtha, which fills so many sections of the first book of the Ramayana,[12] exemplifies, under the veil of allegory, the 35contests for power between the Brahmanical and military classes, and will serve to indicate the probable period when the castes became immutable. Stripped of its allegory, the legend appears to point to a time when the division of the classes was yet imperfect; though we may infer, from the violence of the struggle, that it was the last in which Brahmanhood could be obtained by the military.
Vishvamitra was the son of Gadhi (of the race of Kausika), King of Gadhipura, and contemporary of Ambarisha, King of Ayodhya or Oudh, the fortieth prince from Ikshwaku; consequently about two hundred years anterior to Rama. This event therefore, whence we infer that the system of castes was approaching perfection, was probably about one thousand four hundred years before Christ.
Dates of the Genealogies.
—If proof can be given that these genealogies existed in the days of Alexander, the fact would be interesting. The legend in the Puranas, of the origin of the Lunar race, appears to afford this testimony.
Vyasa, the author of the grand epic the Mahabharata, was son of Santanu (of the race of Hari),[13] sovereign of Delhi, by Yojanagandha, a fisherman’s daughter,[14] [30] consequently illegitimate. He became the spiritual father, or preceptor, of his nieces, the daughters of Vichitravirya, the son and successor of Santanu.
The Herakles Legend.
—Vichitravirya had no male offspring. Of his three daughters, one was named Pandaia
; and Vyasa,
36
being the sole remaining male branch of the house of Santanu, took his niece, and spiritual daughter, Pandaia, to wife, and became the father of Pandu, afterwards sovereign of Indraprastha.
Arrian gives the story thus: "It is further said that he [Herakles][16] had a very numerous progeny of children born to 37him in India ... [31] but that he had only one daughter.[17] The name of this child was Pandaia, and the land in which she was born, and with the sovereignty of which Herakles entrusted her, was called after her name Pandaia" (Indika, viii.).
This is the very legend contained in the Puranas, of Vyasa (who was Hari-kul-es, or chief of the race of Hari) and his spiritual daughter Pandaia, from whom the grand race the Pandavas, and from whom Delhi and its dependencies were designated the Pandava sovereignty.
Her issue ruled for thirty-one generations in direct descents, or from 1120 to 610 before Christ; when the military minister,[18] connected by blood, was chosen by the chiefs who rebelled against the last Pandu king, represented as “neglectful of all the cares of government,” and whose deposition and death introduced a new dynasty.
Two other dynasties succeeded in like manner by the usurpation of these military ministers, until Vikramaditya, when the Pandava sovereignty and era of Yudhishthira were both overturned.
38Indraprastha remained without a sovereign, supreme power being removed from the north to the southern parts of India, till the fourth, or, according to some authorities, the eighth century after Vikrama, when the throne of Yudhishthira was once more occupied by the Tuar tribe of Rajputs, claiming descents from the Pandus. To this ancient capital, thus refounded, the new appellation of Delhi was given; and the dynasty of the founder, Anangpal, lasted to the twelfth century, when he abdicated in favour of his grandson,[19] Prithiviraja, the last imperial Rajput sovereign of India, whose defeat and death introduced the Muhammadans.
This line has also closed with the pageant of a prince, and a colony returned from the extreme west is now the sole arbiter of the thrones of Pandu and Timur.
Britain has become heir to the monuments of Indraprastha raised by the descendants of Budha and Ila; to the iron pillar of the Pandavas, "whose pedestal[20] [32] is fixed in hell"; to the columns reared to victory, inscribed with characters yet unknown; to the massive ruins of its ancient continuous cities, encompassing a space still larger than the largest city in the world, whose mouldering domes and sites of fortresses,[21] the very names of which are 39lost, present a noble field for speculation on the ephemeral nature of power and glory. What monument would Britain bequeath to distant posterity of her succession to this dominion? Not one: except it be that of a still less perishable nature, the monument of national benefit. Much is in our power: much has been given, and posterity will demand the result.